by M. J. Trow
‘Vigilante?’ Maxwell frowned.
‘You people!’ O’Malley snapped. ‘You arrogant bastards. OK, I may not be the brightest apple in the barrel, but I recognised the signs. This Hendricks – wife-beater, wasn’t he? Went to work on his kids as well? What kind of a man does that?’
‘You, for one,’ Maxwell said, looking his man in the face. The muzzle of the gun jolted upwards and he heard the hammer click. ‘I never laid a hand on Camille in my life,’ he hissed, barely audible.
‘What about Alana?’
‘Well,’ the gun lowered a little. ‘Maybe a slap or two. There was nothing in it. This Hendricks was a fucking animal according to the locals. They were talking about it at the card school.’
‘So you killed him?’ Maxwell had his back against the window pane now. He knew there was a surveillance officer across the road, watching his house and Mrs Troubridge’s. He’d be bound to see the odd position, perhaps even O’Malley and his gun. The houses opposite only had two storeys. The man with the binoculars was on a level with the Maxwell’s sitting room window. Surely he would see a man pressed against the window?
‘If I’d done it, I’da shot the bastard’s kneecaps out first. Make him suffer. No, that Sandra had it right, that female cop.’
‘She did? In what way?’
‘Said you pinko-liberals over here are so fucked up with red tape and political correctness you never convict anybody. Hendricks would be doing ten to twenty in Folsom back home.’
‘Ten to twenty?’ Maxwell echoed.
‘Sure. It’s the tariff for attempted murder. I’d get him on that, with a little help from the redneck DAs I know. You bastards bleat about his broken home and his syndromes and extenuating circumstance. Somebody wasn’t happy with that and somebody killed him.’
‘But not you.’
‘I told you, no. Now, for the last time, where’s Hector?’
‘For the last time, Jeff,’ Maxwell said slowly, ‘I don’t know. Why do you want him?’
‘I got my reasons,’ O’Malley said.
‘I hope you have,’ Maxwell said, ‘because there’s a police marksman across the road. He’ll have your head in the cross wires by now.’
O’Malley looked beyond the Head of Sixth Form to sleeping Columbine, the houses half lit across the road. But there was one window in total darkness, the one in line with the Maxwells’ living room. ‘Shit!’ He jammed the gun into the shoulder holster under his coat and dashed for the stairs. Maxwell spun to the window. Marksman, my arse. He couldn’t see anyone at all.
He heard O’Malley clattering down the stairs and the furious scream of a black and white cat as the pair briefly collided near the door.
‘Max?’ Jacquie called from upstairs. ‘Is anything wrong?’
‘Popping out for a minute, sweets,’ he called as though he was off to get a paper or top up his stash of Southern Comfort. Jacquie sat up in the bath, frowning. That didn’t make sense.
At the door, Maxwell saw O’Malley lumbering down the road towards the Mosses’ people carrier outside Number 28. White Surrey flashed briefly in his mind but even when both of them, man and bike, were in their prime they were no match for a two-litre engine driven by a madman. There was nothing else for it. He didn’t want Jacquie putting her life on the line and whoever was supposed to be watching across the road had clearly gone to sleep. Without thinking he snatched Jacquie’s car keys hanging by the hall stand and was out into the night.
Across the road, a startled Robbie McKittrick was gabbling into his mobile. ‘Guv? McKittrick. Sorry to bother you so late but you said you wanted to know if we sighted O’Malley?’
‘Where is he?’ a tired Henry Hall wanted to know.
‘Driving south along Columbine in a people carrier, silver, I think. Registration number’s illegible. Maxwell’s after him.’
‘What?’
‘Peter Maxwell, guv, he’s chasing him.’
There was a long pause. ‘On his bike?’
It was McKittrick’s turn to pause. ‘Ha, ha; like it, guv.’
‘How is he chasing him?’ Hall’s voice was stern at the other end of the phone.
‘In his car, sir,’ McKittrick had a lot of time for Henry Hall, but this took the biscuit. What was he on? The line went dead.
And as it did so, Jacquie Carpenter Maxwell, wrapped in a housecoat and head towel, reached her sitting room window. Below, she saw her car kangarooing down Columbine and she screamed.
* * *
Peter Maxwell had not driven a car for more years than he cared to remember. Not since that mad wet day that he had let his wife do the party run while he roared England on at Twickenham from the comfort of his settee. They had collided, his wife and child, with a police car in pursuance of a suspected felon, or so they had said in court, and Maxwell’s world had turned upside down. He’d tried, in the days and weeks afterwards, to turn the ignition key, to grip the wheel and release the handbrake. He couldn’t do it. Instead, his mind went numb and he found himself sitting there, tears trickling down his cheeks, a driven man who could not drive.
Something changed all that. Tonight. This one night. And that something was Jeff O’Malley, with a gun under his armpit and murder in his heart. Maxwell had no clue where he was going but he had to follow him, stay in sight of those tail lights flashing red as he hurtled round corners. He ran a red light at the corner by the library. So did Maxwell and they were out across the Dam making for the sea.
One by one the patrol cars picked up the message. People carrier driven by Jeff O’Malley, murder suspect, armed and dangerous. Possibly pursued by Peter Maxwell, deranged and equally dangerous, in his own way. Proceed with caution.
Caution was the last thing on Henry Hall’s mind as he roared through the night to 38 Columbine. Jacquie was waiting for him. There’d been no time to wake Alana and Mrs Troubridge and of Hector Gold there was still no sign. Robbie McKittrick found himself off surveillance and babysitting Nolan. His rifle was now unpacked and ready, just in case. And he wasn’t playing Sudoku now.
Sharp left, swing right, taking the roundabout at a ludicrous speed, Maxwell was hanging onto the wheel as though his life depended on it. Somebody else’s did. He saw the brake lights of the people carrier explode in a flash of scarlet and watched as O’Malley, breath snaking out in the night cold, hit the ground running and hammer on the nearest door. Maxwell hit the brakes too, killed the engine and the lights. Funny how it had all come back, the driving. Like falling off a bike, really.
He slipped out of the car and crouched beside it. A light came on beyond the frosted glass and a figure was outlined by the porch light. O’Malley’s gun was in the man’s face and he pushed him backwards. It was vital that Maxwell get there before that door closed – ringing the bell once it was wasn’t likely to elicit much of a response and it wasn’t the season for carolling or trick or treat. He didn’t know he still had it in him and his lungs were bursting as his shoulder hit the glass. Anybody else caught in the back by a flying door would have been catapulted sideways, but this was Jeff O’Malley and he just recoiled, the gun still in his fist, but waving at both men in front of him.
‘Mr Moreton.’ Maxwell eased his suddenly painful shoulder. ‘Hope you don’t mind us calling in?’
O’Malley slammed the door shut and held the Magnum’s barrel horizontally against Moreton’s head, leading him by the shirt sleeve into his lounge. The television screen still flickered in one corner, the sound on mute.
‘You alone?’ O’Malley asked him.
‘Yes,’ Moreton said, eyes wide, his thoughts racing, helpless in this situation.
Maxwell tried to read the situation. There were folderols of the female persuasion dumped on the settee and a rather nasty sepia wedding photo on the sideboard. O’Malley was ahead of him. ‘Little woman not home?’
‘Staying at her mother’s.’ Moreton was thinking on his feet. Janet Moreton was in fact snoring quietly in the second bedroom to the left at the
top of the stairs.
‘Just as well,’ O’Malley said. ‘She wouldn’t like what’s going to happen now. On your knees.’
‘Jeff—’ Maxwell tried to intercede.
‘Shut up!’ O’Malley barked and forced the fitness instructor to the ground. He clicked back the hammer and pointed the gun. ‘Left knee first? Or right? I’ve been told it hurts more when the victim is in this position.’ Something about the way he said it made it clear that his information was first hand and on the spot.
‘Are you mad?’ Moreton gasped. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Why’d you do it?’ O’Malley asked him. ‘Hendricks, Gregson, Shears?’
‘Who?’ Moreton blinked. ‘Do you mean Sarah Gregson? I just played cards with her, that’s all.’
‘OK,’ O’Malley shrugged casually, but there was a murderous glint in his eye. ‘I don’t need the whys. I’ll settle for a confession.’
‘I didn’t do it!’ Moreton was shouting now, beyond trying to keep Janet out of all this. Perhaps she’d wake, realise what was going on, call the police from the upstairs phone.
O’Malley jerked the gun upwards, locking the cold muzzle under Moreton’s left ear. ‘I’m not a cruel man,’ the American said, ‘despite what some guys say about me.’ He flashed a glance at Maxwell. ‘So we’ll dispense with the kneecaps. Better meet the guy upstairs with a clear conscience, fella.’
‘For the last time,’ Moreton was nearly incoherent by now, ‘I didn’t kill anyone.’
Maxwell stood, flexing his fists. He still faced the same problem. O’Malley’s trigger finger was faster than any part of the Head of Sixth Form you cared to name. He wouldn’t be able to cross the carpet in time.
‘OK.’ O’Malley relaxed his thumb, clicking the hammer back gently and he stood upright. ‘So … what is it you Limeys say? I know a man who did.’ He holstered the gun and was gone.
‘Call the police,’ Maxwell barked at the quivering heap on the carpet and he clattered out into the night.
Hall and Jacquie knew these lonely streets in the early hours. So did the patrol cars circling the Dam, purring down St Martin’s Street and beyond the Tesco site. There was no one on the streets now, no one on foot. It was too late for revellers staggering home from the Vine, too early for the most ardent dog walker. Only in the cars was there a hive of activity, the radios crackling. Hall was coordinating it all while Jacquie drove. He didn’t want her to do it in the state she was in but he couldn’t trust her with the coordinates either, for the same reason. At least with the mechanics of driving, she’d be able to focus on one thing at a time.
‘Emergency call, guv,’ she heard Hall’s radio crackle. ‘A Mr Timothy Moreton. Just been threatened with a gun. It’s Jeff O’Malley and somebody claiming to be called Maxwell.’
‘Oh God,’ Jacquie said through gritted teeth.
‘Any direction from Moreton’s?’ Hall asked.
‘West along Barlichway Road. Two men in a people carrier. Licence number … we haven’t got that, guv. Sorry.’
‘We’ve got it. Don’t worry. Put everyone on it, Phil. They’re making for the town centre.’
There was a squawk as the police radio flicked to other channels. Hall looked at Jacquie, staring cold-faced, resolutely ahead. ‘We must accept,’ he said quietly, ‘that we are looking at a hostage situation.’
Even at moments like these, DI Jacquie Carpenter Maxwell could keep her sense of humour. Just. ‘That’ll be OK,’ she said. ‘Max won’t hurt him.’
‘Where are we going, exactly?’ Maxwell asked. O’Malley had been crawling along this street for what seemed like hours.
‘You invited yourself along,’ O’Malley grunted. ‘So shut the fuck up.’
‘That’s no way to talk to someone from a country that let you people join two world wars,’ Maxwell smiled.
O’Malley glowered at him, then he laughed. ‘You goddamn sonofabitch, Maxwell. You know, if things had been different, I coulda gotten to like you.’
‘I’d like to say the same, Jeff,’ Maxwell said, ‘but you having a lethal weapon in your armpit rather put that out of the realms of possibility, didn’t it?’
‘I shoulda left you at Moreton’s. Where is this goddamn apartment? It’s over a cab rank, I know it is.’
‘If it’s the place I think it is, it’s over a grocer’s. And this is Juniper Street. The last grocer here went out of business in 1934, if my A Brief History of Leighford is anything to go by.’
O’Malley looked at him. ‘You know who I’m looking for, dontcha?’
Maxwell nodded. ‘If it wasn’t Moreton …’ he said.
‘Right.’ O’Malley hit the brakes. ‘Then we got just one other place to go.’ And with a scream of tyres, the Mosses’ people carrier squealed off into the night.
‘Juniper Street.’ Hall repeated the radio’s message to Jacquie, though she’d heard it plainly enough.
‘That’s where …’ she suddenly realised.
‘… we should have been looking all along. Phil?’
‘Guv.’
‘Get a couple of cars to 28 Juniper Street. Flat 2B. Mark Chambers. Traffic warden. And don’t let the ticket machine fool you. This man is armed and dangerous. We’re on our way. No one is to enter the premises until we arrive.’
‘Jesus,’ Maxwell whispered. ‘I didn’t know we paid our traffic wardens so well.’
He and O’Malley sat in the people carrier in front of a large detached house, dark with rhododendron bushes and willow. Only the drive gleamed pale in the half-moon.
‘Of course,’ he said, ‘it could be that Mr Chambers’ dear old mum was rather better heeled than he let on.’ He glanced at O’Malley. ‘Or the blackmail business is definitely taking off.’
‘Blackmailer. Killer. This guy’s into multitasking big time.’
‘How did you know it was him?’
‘I didn’t,’ O’Malley admitted, ‘but it had to be somebody at the card school. Some sonofabitch trying to frame me. That meant it was somebody I knew, and apart from you and your little lady, I don’t know anybody outside of the card school.’
‘I must admit,’ Maxwell said, ‘I was beginning to suspect Hector.’
‘Hec?’ O’Malley roared with laughter. ‘That pantywaist! And here I was thinking you were some judge of character. Wait here.’
‘Jeff.’ Maxwell held the man’s arm. ‘Think about this. You’ve got your man. You and I reached the same conclusion at the same time. Henry’s not going to be far behind. Leave it now. We’ll call Henry, put him in the full picture. All right, you’re facing assault charges with a deadly weapon, etcetera, etcetera, but that’s a long way from murder.’
‘Yeah,’ O’Malley said, almost sadly. ‘And I’m a long way from home. I’m not gonna crease your skull with this,’ he patted the pistol butt, ‘but I ain’t taking no responsibility for what happens in there.’
‘Fair enough,’ Maxwell said and the two of them approached the house.
It was locked, front and back. There were burglar alarms at various vantage points on the walls, but no obvious sign of CCTV cameras. And no security lights. Perhaps Mark Chambers didn’t expect any visitors. Maxwell was still peering in through the wobbly glass in the front door when O’Malley nudged him aside with a crowbar in his hand. He caught Maxwell’s look.
‘He ain’t gonna open up like we was collecting for the Blue Cross.’ And he slammed it forward, shattering glass and barging the swinging door aside.
The burglar alarm screamed into the darkness, warning half of West Sussex of intruders, and O’Malley hauled open a cupboard by the door and jammed the flat of his hand down on the control panel. The screech stopped as soon as it had started.
‘No chance of a li’l lady here,’ the American growled to Maxwell and he made for the stairs, flicking on lights as he went. O’Malley moved quietly for a big man and he was already on the landing behind a door when a bleary-eyed Mark Chambers stood there in his pyjamas, blinking in disb
elief as he saw Maxwell below him, halfway up the stairs.
‘Mr Maxwell?’ he said, frowning. ‘What are you doing here?’
Chambers had a gun in his right hand, a .44 Magnum which Maxwell had seen rather a lot of in the past hour. It was the old television police drama cliché again, the last words of a victim in dear old Midsomer before the credits rolled or the advert break came on. Maxwell glanced imperceptibly at O’Malley, who flattened himself against the wall, raising a finger to his lips.
‘Just passing,’ Maxwell played along. ‘Thought I’d arrest you for murder.’
A bemused smile crossed Chambers’ face. ‘I’d heard you were something of an amateur detective,’ he crowed, ‘with the accent on the amateur.’
‘Where did you hear that, Mr Chambers? On the police band? You remember Jeff O’Malley, don’t you? American gentleman? Card player?’
‘Get to the point,’ Chambers snapped.
‘Well, he thought your flat in Juniper Street was above a taxi rank because he heard the radio broadcasts. But what he really heard was the police band you habitually tune into, wasn’t it?’
‘I could have been one of them.’ Chambers’ face was a livid white. ‘Should have been one of them. I applied to the police, not once, but several times. And they turned me down. Some nonsense about unsuitability. So what do they do? They let bastards go. Like that shit Hendricks. That Sarah Gregson who’d killed her own mother. How do you do that, Mr Maxwell? Kill your own mother.’ He shook his head at the injustice of the world.
‘I don’t think Jacob Shears deserved the treatment you gave him, did he?’
‘Ah,’ Chambers shifted a little nervously. ‘That was my bad, I’m afraid. Mistaken identity. I meant to take out that child molester, Melling. Still, it’s early days.’
‘Why did you change your MO?’ Maxwell asked. And why, he heard the question screaming in his head, didn’t O’Malley do something?
‘To keep the rozzers guessing, of course. I’d been planning this for years, but when Jeff O’Malley arrived, I thought, “What a perfect patsy.” So,’ he waved the gun, ‘what better pointer to an American than this? I didn’t need to waste a bullet on Sarah Gregson when a simple push would do the trick. Shears was a little messy, but I was running out of methods by then. You, of course, will die as a result of a break-in. Bizarre, they’ll all say, for a respected member of the community, a teacher, but there it is. Bit of night-prowling, perhaps, to boost his salary – bit too much like hard work if you ask me. Not quiet and sophisticated like blackmail.’
